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The Programme at-a-glance
2004
ESRC Public Services Programmeestablished; Professor Christopher Hoodappointed as Programme Director;1st Projects Call; first 14 Projectscommissioned
2005
Programme launched; first 14 Projectsbegan research; two further Projectscommissioned in May began research inOctober; 2nd Projects Call
2006First 14 Projects reported results; 2ndCall Projects commissioned in Spring to
start 2006; 3rd Call for fellowships andresearch on medical regulation andperformance
2007
Some 2nd Call projects report results;fellowships and 3rd call projects begin
2008
First 2nd Call Projects complete
2009
Remaining Projects complete;fellowships complete; ProgrammePublication; Programme ends November
The Programme’s new website is now live. We have incorporated many innovations totry to make the website as user-friendly as possible, and there is plenty of newcontent waiting to be discovered too.
Most of our first call projects have now completed and are beginning to have theirresearch findings published. You can find details of and links to these publications onthe respective project pages.
What’s more, our collection of discussion papers is beginning to grow as our projectsprogress. We have already had papers from Stephen Osborne and Allyson Pollock’sprojects. The former investigates what affects the innovative capacity of voluntary andcommunity organisations (VCOs). Are VCOs inherently innovative, or is innovation aproduct of the institutional funding regime to which VCOs are subject? Allyson Pollockand her team have produced three papers on the problem of hospital ‘bed-blocking’and whether the 2003 Community Care Act, which allowed hospitals in England tocharge social service departments for beds when they were responsible for a patient’sdelayed discharge, has successfully ‘unblocked’ hospital beds.
Our latest discussion paper, by James Downe and colleagues, compares the differingapproaches to scrutinising local government performance implemented in England,Wales and Scotland. These result in different types of performance data and access toit (for example, Wales does not have standardised performance indicators thatcompare services’ performance against one another or over time). Despite significantdifferences between theregimes, public serviceauditors’ are facingcommon challenges indeveloping assessmentsthat do not over-burdenservice providers, andthat are effective inidentifying where servicesneed to be bettered. Keepchecking the website fornew papers.
Programme OfficeProgramme Director: Prof. Christopher HoodProgramme Officer: Bryony GillProgramme Administrator: Rikki DeanDeputy Director: Dr. Deborah WilsonProject Assistant to Programme Director: Dr. Ruth Dixon
ESRC Public Services ProgrammeDepartment of Politics andInternational RelationsUniversity of OxfordManor RoadOxford OX1 3UQTel: +44 (0)1865 285968Fax: +44 (0)1865 278725Email: [email protected]: www.publicservices.ac.uk
Newsletter of the ESRCPublic Services Programme
New research
Number 6 Winter 2007
Newsletter of the ESRCPublic Services Programme
www.publicservices.ac.uk
www.publicservices.ac.uk
Photography by: Sally and Richard Greenhill andFreefoto.com, disusedrailways.co.ukDesign: Harriet EaglePrint: Oxuniprint
PublicServices
Projects� Learning Responsibility? Exploring Doctors’
Transitions to New Levels of MedicalResponsibilityProf. Trudie Roberts (University of Leeds) [email protected]
� An Analysis of Data on Registration and Fitness toPractice Cases Held by the General MedicalCouncil in the Context of Risk-Based Approachesto Medical RegulationProf. Sally Lloyd-Bostock (London School of Economics)[email protected]
� Regulation, ‘Donated Labour’ and theNHS ReformsDr. Tim Ensor (Oxford Policy Institute) [email protected]
� Identifying Biographical and Biopsychosocial RiskFactors amongst Under Performing DoctorsDr. Debbie Cohen (Cardiff University) [email protected]
� The Visible and Invisible Performance Effects ofTransparency in Medical Professional RegulationDr. Gerry McGivern (Royal Holloway) [email protected]
� The Experiences of UK, EU and Non-EUMedical Graduates Making the Transition to theUK WorkplaceDr. Jan Illing (Newcastle University) [email protected]
Fellowships� Regulating Doctors: Between Performance
and PracticeProf. Mary Dixon-Woods (Leicester University) [email protected]
� Public Services Reform in Scotland: CurrentKnowledge and Future ProspectsDr. Tobias Jung (Edinburgh University) [email protected]
� An Exploratory Study of Parliamentarians andtheir Use of Healthcare Performance Metrics:The Scottish Parliament Health and CommunityCare CommitteeDr. Gordon Marnoch (University of Ulster) [email protected]
� Public Attitudes towards Services of GeneralInterest in Comparative PerspectiveDr. Stephen Van de Walle (Birmingham University)[email protected]
� Theories of PerformanceDr. Colin Talbot (Manchester University) [email protected]
� Standards of Evidence for Assessing PublicService PerformanceDr. Oliver James (University of Exeter) [email protected]
NewWebsiteThe programme is past its half-way stage now. But the best is yet to come.We’ve commissioned almost all our projects now and over the next two years we’llbe seeing results from nearly thirty of them, to add to our existing work on incentivesand performance metrics. The new work will include a major UK-wide survey ofpublic attitudes to public service performance, nine related studies of what affectsdoctors’ performance, and several studies on how politicians, managers andregulators manage performance and with what effects. We may not leave behind anarmy of terracotta warriors to be rediscovered in 2,000 years time, but we will beleaving a substantial legacy of investment in the analysis of public serviceperformance across the whole spectrum of social science methods.
I think you’ll like our new-look website that’s designed to make the Programme moreaccessible to our many virtual visitors. I hope you like the new Programme poster,which can be found on the website. And I’m sure you’ll like Bryony Gill, who hasjoined the Programme team (see page 2) and has a lot of useful experience and ideasabout how to communicate our ideas effectively.
This year we’ve mounted two major conferences in addition to various smallerworkshops and meetings; one on ranking and rating public services in August and oneon the only-too-topical subject of risk and public services in December. We’re alreadyplanning our conference programme for next year and beyond as the Programmemoves into its final stages. So we’re hoping for a high-performance 2008, and as
always we welcome any suggestionsand advice on how we can do better.
Season’s greetings!
Christopher Hood,Programme DirectorGladstone Professor of Governmentand Fellow of All Souls College,Oxford.
This summary includes only our newly commissioned research.For a full list of our projects and fellowships visit our website.
Newsletter of the ESRCPublic Services Programme
News and events round-up
www.publicservices.ac.uk
Timing is everythingProject: The Effect of Ownership and Regulation on British Railways from 1850-2007Research team: Tim Leunig (LSE) and Nick Crafts (Warwick)
Full details of all our projects are available atwww.publicservices.ac.uk.
To learn more about the project andhow to contact the researchers, please visit
http://www.publicservices.ac.uk/research/237/
Projectspo
tligh
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Two trains leave Surbiton station for London Waterloo at 9.12a.m., departing fromopposite sides of the same platform. One train takes ten minutes longer to reach itsdestination than the other, non-stop, train. As you walk onto the platform, you cansee that on the faster train you will have to stand in unpleasantly packedconditions, while on the slower one you can be sure of getting a seat. Would youchoose the ‘armpit line’ or the only slightly slower but much more comfortabletrain? This natural experiment (which you can observe for yourself any day and incomparable conditions in other cities) shows that commuters overwhelmingly optfor the faster train, even at the cost of considerable personal discomfort. Thatmeans people place a high value on speed when they have to trade it off againstother aspects of performance
So what has happened to train speeds in Britain? Tim Leunig (LSE) and NickCrafts (Warwick) have been computerising train times (including waiting
time) for major rail journeys in a project to see just how quickly trainshave been transporting us from origin to destination. By selectingvarious years throughout the period from 1850 to 2007, they areable to show how rail speeds have changed since the times whentrains were still propelled by steam and match this againstchanges in ownership, regulation, investment and technology tolearn about what causes significant increases in train speeds.
As one might expect, the over-arching narrative tells of risingtrain speeds and train frequency, but several interesting sub-plots are beginning to emerge from this story as the data isanalysed further. It appears that it was only in the Victorian erathat train speeds, on the whole, increased steadily. There was no
improvement on many medium to long distance journeys such asLondon to Leeds, London to Bristol and London to Cambridge
between 1910 and 1955, and the agglomeration of most of the railwaycompanies into the ‘Big Four’ in 1923 coincides with decreasing speeds
on some journeys (see graph).
So what’s the story for you, the modern passenger? As Tim notes, “If you use thetrain for medium to long journeys, then the news is good. Governments haveinvested heavily in projects such as Bristol Mainline and East Coast Mainline andas a result journey times have decreased dramatically, but the news if you are acommuter is that on many lines trains are no faster now than they were in 1955(see graph). Passengers who commute to stations such as Ealing and Reading thathappen to fall on the Bristol Mainline are okay, but other commuter lines likeBrighton and Richmond have been neglected. Waterloo, Victoria, Liverpool Streetand London Bridge are Britain’s busiest stations. If the first 50 miles of track fromeach of these stations had received investment commensurate with the number ofpeople who use them, commuters would now be able to get up later and get homeearlier. In fact, based on the speed of trains to Ealing and Reading, the averagecommuter in our sample of towns would save 9 days a year – the equivalent ofdoubling the number of bank holidays!”
Programme DirectorScoops Award
Christopher Hood recently receivedthe Public Management ResearchAssociation H. George FredericksonAward for Career Contributions toPublic Management Research. Theaward is presented once every twoyears to a scholar who has made amajor impact on the field over anextended research career.
IPMN Workshop: Ranking and RatingPublic ServicesThree-day workshop, 7-9 August, Worcester College Oxford
28 participants from 15 countries met at Worchester College in Oxford to examinethe growing practice of ranking and rating public services, both at an internationallevel and within particular countries. The six papers that were presented at theconference – and the discussions they stimulated – drew on several differentdisciplinary and methodological perspectives as well as reflecting differentinternational and institutional experience. The conference covered three broadquestions: (i) what are the forces that lead to the emergence of ranking and ratingsystems; (ii) what are the forces that shape the development of such systems; and(iii) what are the behavioural consequences of their introduction. One theme thatemerged from the workshop was that, while rankings and ratings are probably hereto stay, the way they are used is likely to change. We need a ‘second generation’ ofresearch in ratings and rankings to go beyond the standard social scienceassessments of validity and reliability to issues of how to manage ratings andrankings and what effects they have.
Risk and Public Services
Joint conference with the Centre for Analysis of Risk andRegulation, 13-14 December, LSE, Tower 3
Risk is fundamental to the provision of public services. Yet the links between riskand public services have not received the attention they deserve. Health, education,social care and the control of crime are among the most publicly visible andpolitically sensitive public services, even in the current era of markets and quasi-markets. Organisations that provide such services both respond to risks in theirenvironment, and create risks to others. MRSA infections, prison escapes, and theabuse of children or the elderly are just some of the most prominent recent
examples. But debates about public services across at least the past two decadeshave tended to frame the issues wholly or primarily in terms of markets andmonitoring. The aim of this conference was to redress this neglect, and to reframethe debate about public services in terms of risk.
In the first session, Christopher Hood and Peter Miller argued that private-sector-derived risk management frameworks did not fit very easily to some key publicservice risks. That was followed by sessions on risks of bad doctoring and healthcare management (Sally Lloyd-Bostock and Ellie Scrivens), the management of risk ofharm to children by social workers (Sue White), the management of risks in schools(Tony Travers) and in the criminal justice system (Rod Morgan). A common theme ofthe conference was that there are significant risks associated with ‘risk-basedregulation’ across all of those domains. See our website for a full report soon.
72nd Meeting of the Health Economists’Study GroupThree-day conference, 9-11 January 2008,hosted by the Health Economics Group, UEA
The Programme’s special session on ‘Health care metrics and reform’ at this majorconference will be chaired by Deborah Wilson, Programme Deputy Director, andconsist of papers from three of our projects. Richard Cookson asks whether theintroduction of the ‘internal market’ in the NHS has led to greater socio-economicinequality in the use of hospital services. Frank Windmeijer discusses whether theregime of ‘targets and terror’ was successful in reducing hospital waiting times inEngland. And, Nigel Rice argues that anchoring vignettes are a useful method ofmeasuring and comparing health system responsiveness.
Institutions, Incentives and the Public SectorOne-day conference, 18 January,Institute of Minerals and Mining, London.
The Oxford Policy Institute, which is conducting a project on donated labour for theProgramme, seeks to explore the role of incentives in public services. Reforms thatshape the way public sector services are delivered around the world have introducedvarious organisational, managerial and financial incentives to improve quality andproductivity. Understanding how organisations and individuals respond to suchincentives and, in particular, how `high-powered’ incentives interact with informalincentives, presents intriguing problems that the conference will address.
The conference will begin by asking what ‘good government’ really means and willthen ‘drill down’ through a consideration of the incentives that determine theperformance of local government, ending with two specific public services, healthand education.
The Impact of Judicial Review on Local Services inEngland and WalesAfternoon workshop, Spring 2008,date and location to be confirmed…
Maurice Sunkin and his team at Essex have been investigating the effect oflitigation on public service provision by local authorities in England and Wales. Theirresearch examines, among other things, whether there is a link between the level oflitigation directed at a local authority and the performance of that authority on keyquality indicators and whether there are any differences between those localauthorities that often find themselves in the courtroom and those that do not.
Michael O’Higgins, Chair of the Audit Commission, will open the debate, which aimsto discuss the team’s findings and stimulate a dialogue with practitioners and policy-makers. For more information contact Janice Webb, [email protected].
Paradoxes of ModernityHilary Term Workshop Series,Oxford Internet Institute
Convened by Christopher Hood, and Helen Margetts, Professor of Internet andSociety (Oxford Internet Institute), the Programme’s spring workshop series,Paradoxes of Modernity, focuses on the puzzles and unexpected effects ofsupposedly modern and rational policy and management practices. It will explore, forinstance, why politicians don’t invest more in commuter rail, why politiciansintroduce performance assessment systems that do not benefit them electorally, andwhat effect ‘rational’ nutrition programmes have on the ground. If you would like tobe added to mailing list for this event, please contact the Programme office.
Profile: Bryony Gill,(Programme Officer)Bryony is the latest addition to theProgramme’s Oxford-based staff. With abackground in the social sciences, she hasworked on a number of studies concerned with‘brain drain’ and the internationalisation of researchcareers and is looking forward to engaging with theresearch in the Programme. The rest of her time is spent writing her doctorate,decorating her house and drinking large glasses of wine.
